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FRI, MAR 11 | 7:30 PM

CHOPIN CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER

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PROGRAM

Michael Brown, pianoGloria Chien, pianoCho-Liang Lin, violinNicholas Canellakis, cello

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)Barcarolle in F-sharp major for Piano, Op. 60 (1845-46) Brown

Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 65 (1845-46)Allegro moderato Scherzo: Allegro con brio Largo Finale: Allegro

Canellakis, Brown

INTERMISSION

Nocturne No. 8 in D-flat major for Piano, Op. 27, No. 2 (1835) Chien

Waltz in D-flat major for Piano, Op. 64, No. 1, “Minute” (1847) Chien

Trio in G minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 8 (1828-29)Allegro con fuoco Scherzo: Con moto ma non troppo Adagio sostenuto Finale: Allegretto

Chien, Lin, Canellakis

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MICHAEL BROWNMichael Brown has been described as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers” (The New York Times). Winner of a 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) and an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. He makes regular appearances with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic, the Seattle, Grand Rapids, North Carolina, and Albany symphonies, and was selected by pianist András Schiff to perform an international solo recital tour, making debuts in Zurich’s Tonhalle and New York’s 92nd Street Y. He has appeared at the Tanglewood, Mostly Mozart, Marlboro, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Tippet Rise, Gilmore, Bridgehampton, and Bard music festivals and performs regularly with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis. A prolific composer, he performed his Concerto for Piano and Strings (2020) with the Kalamazoo, Maryland, and Wichita symphony orchestras. He was the composer and artist-in-residence at the New Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons and a 2018 Copland House Award winner. He is the First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild competition and earned degrees in piano and composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied

with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald, and composers Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two 19th-century Steinway Ds, Octavia and Daria.

NICHOLAS CANELLAKISHailed by The New Yorker as a “superb young soloist,” Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation. In The New York Times, his playing was praised as “impassioned... the audience seduced by Mr. Canellakis’s rich, alluring tone.” His recent highlights include solo debuts with the Virginia, Albany, Bangor, and Delaware symphony orchestras; concerto appearances with the Erie Philharmonic, the New Haven Symphony as artist-in-residence, and the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall; Europe and Asia tours with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and recitals throughout the United States with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Brown, including a recital of American cello-piano works presented by CMS. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he is a regular guest artist at many of the world’s leading music festivals, including Santa Fe, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Bard, Bridgehampton, La Jolla, Hong Kong, Moab, Music in the Vineyards, and Saratoga Springs. He is the artistic

ARTISTS

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director of Chamber Music Sedona in Arizona and is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory. Filmmaking and acting are special interests of his, and he has produced, directed, and starred in several short films and music videos.

GLORIA CHIENTaiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has a diverse musical life as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She was selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year. She made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard and performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. In recent seasons she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, The Phillips Collection, the Kissinger Sommer festival, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. In 2009 she launched String Theory, a chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in downtown Chattanooga that has become one of Tennessee’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at the Music@Menlo festival, a post she held for the next decade. In 2017 she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as co-artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo serves as the new artistic directors

at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, OR. Chien received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music as a student of Russell Sherman and Wha-Kyung Byun. She is an artist-in-residence at Lee University in Cleveland, TN, and is a Steinway Artist.

CHO-LIANG LINViolinist Cho-Liang Lin is lauded the world over for the eloquence of his playing and his superb musicianship. In a concert career spanning the globe for more than 30 years, he is equally at home with orchestra, in recital, playing chamber music, and in the teaching studio. Performing on several continents, he has appeared with the orchestras of New York, Detroit, Toronto, Dallas, Houston, Nashville, San Diego, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; in Europe with the orchestras of Bergen, Stockholm, Munich, and the English Chamber Orchestra; and in Asia with the orchestras of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangkok, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. An advocate of contemporary music, he has collaborated with and premiered works by Tan Dun, Joel Hoffman, John Harbison, Christopher Rouse, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lalo Schifrin, Paul Schoenfield, Bright Sheng, and Joan Tower. Also an avid chamber musician, he has made recurring appearances at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. As music director of La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest from 2001 to 2018, Lin helped develop the festival

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from one that focused on chamber music into a multidisciplinary festival featuring dance, jazz, and a new music program. He also serves as artistic director of the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival. In 2000 Musical America named him its Instrumentalist of the Year. He is currently a professor at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He plays the 1715 “Titian” Stradivarius.

RICH KLEINFELDT, hostRich Kleinfeldt is a professional musician, broadcaster, teacher, and lecturer. He is a founding member of the Washington Saxophone Quartet, which has been together since 1976, and performs as a soloist and chamber musician. Kleinfeldt is currently the host of the nationally syndicated

radio program Center Stage from Wolf Trap, for which this evening’s concert is being recorded, and he announces for Classical WETA 90.9 FM. He is a former international broadcaster for the Voice of America and the Maestro Classical Music Channel of the WorldSpace Satellite Network. Kleinfeldt has been teaching at Episcopal High School since 2008 and maintains a studio in his home. A graduate of Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, and Catholic University in Washington, D.C., Kleinfeldt performed with the United States Army Band until 1983 as saxophone soloist and master of ceremonies. He has been the onstage host for Chamber Music at The Barns since the series’ inception.

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On November 2, 1830, Frédéric Chopin left his hometown, Warsaw, to embark on a second musical tour. He would never return home again. The rest of his life would be spent in Paris as a result of ongoing political strife between Poland and its occupiers in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. It was a difficult decision to remain away from home, but he seemed to feel his questions (Would he be more useful as a patriot abroad representing his country through culture? Would it be career suicide to go back?) had no good answers. Exceptionally talented, Chopin struggled only briefly before becoming connected with the best and brightest of his generation. His circle of friends included Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Franz Liszt (all born within one or two years of each other), and his employers included the Rothschild family and numerous aristocrats.

By the time Chopin arrived in Paris, the age of the piano virtuoso was in full swing. German poet Heinrich Heine, whose sharp-tongued observations of the scene provide colorful commentary on various soloists, remarked they were thick on the ground like “a plague of locusts swarming to pick Paris clean.” As a pianist Chopin stood out from the crowd and earned Heine’s praise. Equipped with seemingly preternatural elegance, delicacy of touch, and a singular technique that allowed for unusually smooth legato, he was part of

the “new pianoforte school” according to Ferdinand Hiller. Schumann deemed the approach “imagination and technique…side by side.” To attain the sound he wanted, Chopin gravitated toward the pianos made by Pleyel. These instruments had (and maintain) a reputation for responsiveness to sensitive and highly nuanced playing styles. Pleyel would become his exclusive instrument provider.

As a composer, Chopin famously dedicated the majority of his efforts toward writing for the piano, but another instrument close to his heart was the cello. All of his chamber music includes it. Early on, he leaned toward writing “brilliant” virtuosic show pieces in line with popular mode, but as he matured he turned toward crafting exquisite works distinguished for their breathtaking beauty and ardor. Though firmly rooted in the Romantic ideals of conveying passionate feeling, Chopin wrote in such a way that the formal organization and structure was more closely descended from Mozart, Haydn, and Bach (all composers whom Chopin deeply admired).

At the edge of all of Chopin’s successes remained shadows. First, there was his status as a political exile and the homesickness bound up in that circumstance. Then, there was his blighted relationship with the author, George Sand, with whom he likely sought to fulfill his desire for a stand-in family and stability, in addition

PROGRAM NOTES

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to sharing a creative life. Finally, his lifelong struggle with tuberculosis and its debilitating effects—a disease that claimed the life of his younger sister when they were both teenagers.

Curiously, Chopin confessed a foreboding fear in a letter to a childhood friend just two months before leaving home for the last time: “I am still here [in Warsaw]; I have not the strength to decide on my date; I think I shall go away to forget my home forever; I think I shall go away to die; and how dismal it must be to die anywhere else except where one has lived! How horrible it will be to see beside my deathbed some cold-blooded doctor or servant instead of my own family.”

Chopin succumbed to complications from lifelong tuberculosis in the early morning hours on October 17, 1849. One of his sisters made the journey to be by his side. He made her promise to have his heart taken out of his body because he suffered from a phobia of being buried alive. His invitation-only funeral was attended by thousands, and his last wish to have Mozart’s Requiem performed was honored. Famed opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer played the timpani part and Hector Berlioz famously observed, “the whole of artistic and aristocratic Paris was there.”

Barcarolle in F-sharp major for Piano, Op. 60 Frédéric Chopin Born March 1, 1810, in Żelazowa Wola. Died October 17, 1849, in Paris. Composed in 1845-46Duration: 9 minutes

The Barcarolle in F-sharp major represents a rare instance of Chopin composing a work inspired by a

country other than Poland. Here, he takes the gentle rocking of an Italian gondolier song as his point of departure, turning it into a tour de force. It is unclear what inspired Chopin to write this work—he had never been to Venice or anywhere else in Italy. It may have been a potential stop along his ill-fated tour before revolution derailed his plans, and he did have a long-standing adoration for Italian opera—the bel canto (beautiful singing) style inspired the mellifluous shape of many of his melodies. Chopin’s friend, Felix Mendelssohn, who had written five Venetian boat songs, observed that Chopin was “quite a second Paganini,” performing “all sorts of impossibilities which one never thought could be done.” In fact, Chopin had seen Paganini perform in Warsaw in 1829, the year before he left, and it has been suggested that glimmerings of the future barcarolle can be detected in the Souvenir de Paganini that he penned immediately after hearing the great violin virtuoso.

Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 65 Frédéric Chopin Composed in 1845-46 Premiered on February 16, 1848, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris by cellist Auguste Franchomme and the composer as pianist. Duration: 28 minutes

“With my cello sonata I am now contented, now discontented. I throw it in a corner and then pick it up again,” Chopin wrote in exasperation over a work that took him nearly two years to write. During that time his relationship with George Sand was disintegrating. It would be his last published work.

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The piece was written for, and dedicated to, the cellist Auguste-Joseph Franchomme, known for his “warmth, animation, and fire,” and elegant phrasing facilitated by a French bow hold paired with deft left-hand technique. His instrument was a 1711 Stradivari (later owned by Mstislav Rostropovich and heard in some of his recordings). By all accounts, Franchomme and Chopin’s manner of performance and technical skill were a perfect pairing when they collaborated. Franchomme was also one of Chopin’s close friends, having met each other in the early 1830s when Chopin had newly arrived in Paris. He was also with him at the last moments, acting as one of the pallbearers at Chopin’s funeral.

Chopin famously disliked public concerts, confessing to Franz Liszt: “I am not fitted to give concerts, the public frightens me.” In his entire lifetime he only appeared a couple dozen times on the stage, preferring instead the private environment of salon evenings. But, with his health in rapid decline, he was convinced by his friends to give a concert at the Salle Pleyel hall in the early months of 1848. To ease his nerves, Camille Pleyel (son of the piano builder) had the hall filled with flowers and carpets to mimic the feeling of a home. Movingly, the decision was also made to place Chopin’s closest friends around the piano on stage so he wouldn’t immediately see the hall behind. The one performer Chopin wanted with him was Franchomme. However, what you hear on this program is not what they heard.

That night the first movement of the sonata was cut entirely, and only the last three were performed. This was owing to its sprawling length that takes up the bulk of the piece. It seems as if Chopin

was trying to do something new with sonata form with the opening, and perhaps also embed a disconsolate commentary on his life in Paris. Some scholarship suggests a link between the opening descending melodic line (heard first in the piano) and the first notes of Schubert’s Winterreise that underpin the lyrics “I arrived a stranger, a stranger I depart.” The second movement, Scherzo, contains two main contrasting moods in ABA form, whilst the Largo pulls off a magic trick with time: it sounds far more expansive than its compact 27 measures. Often described as having the characteristics of a tarantella dance, the final movement bounces on its syncopated rhythms, melts into occasional lyrical sections, and ultimately funnels its energy forward to a triumphant end.

Nocturne No. 8 in D-flat major for Piano, Op. 27, No. 2 Frédéric Chopin Composed in 1835Duration: 6 minutes

In the summer of 1835, Chopin was finally reunited with his parents for a brief time in Karlsbad. By winter he was back in Paris attending all three performances given by John Field, an Irish pianist and composer 28 years his senior. A former apprentice of Clementi about whom Haydn jotted “plays the piano extremely well,” Field wrote 18 nocturnes and is credited for elevating and popularizing the genre. (Franz Liszt went a step further to toast Field as a pioneering Romantic who “opened the way for all the productions which have since appeared under the various titles of Songs without Words, Impromptus, Ballades, etc.”) Sadly, by the time Chopin saw him, Field’s health was deteriorating due to heavy alcohol consumption

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and cancer, and he was in no mood to meet the “sickroom talent,” as he called Chopin, whose growing popularity was encroaching on his pride.

Regardless of how Field felt about Chopin, the two pianists formed a kind of de facto guild of elegance as both shared a strikingly similar technical approach to the instrument, one that favored intimacy and complexity over showmanship. Both also maximized on mechanical developments in the piano itself, like the increasing efficiency of damper pedals, allowing sound to resonate longer and rise in a cloud of hazy harmonies—a perfect effect for the meditative character of the nocturne. In Op. 27, No. 2, pedal markings are underlined by the instructions “sempre legato” (always connected) as the unwavering oscillation of the left hand provides an anchor for the increasingly ornamented coloratura-like melody. Drifting between major and minor tonalities, the impression on the ear is not unlike moonlight revealed or hidden by clouds carried by nocturnal breeze.

Waltz in D-flat major for Piano, Op. 64, No. 1, “Minute” Frédéric ChopinComposed in 1847 Duration: 2 minutes

Of the waltzes Chopin wrote, the D-flat major is arguably his most widely recognized. It is also steeped in the most lore. First, there is the unverified but charming anecdote about its genesis. The story goes that one of George Sand’s lively little dogs, Marquis, was running about the room cheerfully amusing itself as Chopin was composing, thereby influencing the energetic and playful nature of the piece. Next, the nickname of “Minute.” Some suggest it’s simply an

observation of the composition’s brevity, whilst others take it literally as a timed 60-second challenge against the clock. One note of interest is that a waltz was, in fact, a very fast dance. Reportedly the average tempo taken whirled dancers about the room at a brisk pace of 88-120 bpm. The phenomenon provoked Anton Vieth to remark in 1818, “I do not know why this spirit of super-haste and extreme tension is becoming so general both in dancing and in music.”

The word “waltzen” means to revolve, and whether imitating the dog or the physical movement of the dancers, the distinctive quality of Op. 64, No. 1 is the twirling motion of the melody as it spins and then flies exuberantly upward and outward. A graceful interlude slows as if catching breath before extended trills signal the return of the effervescent main theme propelling that spritely energy to the end with a flourish.

Trio in G minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 8 Frédéric Chopin Composed in 1828-29 Premiered August 29, 1830, in Warsaw with the composer at the piano. Duration: 30 minutes

By the time he reached his late teen years, Chopin had already been lauded as a remarkable local talent for more than half of his life. His father was a well-respected teacher at the Warsaw Lyceum, and the connections the family had through their involvement in the academic establishment were crucial to his early successes at home before going abroad. As something of a child prodigy, Chopin was already composing as early as age seven. Well-liked by the aristocracy, he gave his

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first public performance at Radziwiłł Palace (now the Presidential Palace) when he was eight.

Chopin’s relationship with the Radziwiłł household continued throughout his youth and teenage years and was familiar enough to accommodate occasional visits. In the fall of 1828, Chopin and a friend had the opportunity to travel to Berlin to hear the explorer Alexander von Humboldt speak, though unsurprisingly Chopin was drawn to exploring the musical scenes of the city. On the trip back to Warsaw, the traveling party stopped by Poznań to pay a visit to Prince Antoni Radziwiłł. Whilst there, Chopin improvised at the keyboard for the guests during a salon gathering held that evening.

Since Radziwiłł was a talented amateur cellist, Chopin took the liberty of composing the trio, his first piece of chamber music, for him. A traditionally structured work opening in sonata form, its notable feature is the consistently low pitch of the violin. That may have been the result Chopin’s deliberations over replacing the violin with a viola. A sweet natured Scherzo vivace follows in the major key with a delightful waltz in stark contrast to the ruminative Adagio sostenuto. The final movement has a suggestion of mazurka about its dance-like qualities and, like the rest of the trio, features the piano prominently.

Upon receiving the music, Radziwiłł responded: “My Dear Chopin, I gratefully accept the dedication of your trio which you are kind enough to offer me. I should even be glad if you would hasten its publication so that I might have the pleasure of playing it with you…Accept, my dear Chopin, my renewed assurances of the interest which your talent arouses in me and of the high esteem in which I hold you.” Of course, we know how the story ends: Chopin never had the chance to play the trio with Radziwiłł. He did, however, return to the key of G minor in his last chamber work, the cello sonata, thus bringing this genre of his oeuvre full circle.

Program notes by Kathryn Bacasmot, who is an independent writer about music.

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